Watch: Vulture Gang Steals Cheetah's Kill

Even though the cheetahs took down this impala, they didn’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Vultures Gang Up on Cheetah, Steal Its Dinner

If you thought a hungry cheetah would beat out any other animal for a fresh kill—you’d be wrong.

This fascinating video from Kruger National Park in South Africa shows a gang of vultures apparently bullying cheetahs away from an impala they just killed for a meal.

According to experts, this isn’t really surprising. “Of the three African big cats, cheetahs are the most fragile,” says Luke Dollar, a conservation biologist and the head of National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative.

Besides the fact they may have already had enough time to eat their fill, this cheetah mother is with her cub and is likely even more risk-averse than usual.

Corinne Kendall, a vulture expert and National Geographic Society explorer, also says this is a familiar scene. She has often witnessed vultures pushing other animals off kills, but for an unexpected reason.

“We’ve done research that shows hyenas use vultures to find carcasses. Hyenas are arriving at kills faster than if they were doing a general search of the area,” says Kendall, noting that the cheetahs might not just be afraid of the vultures, but what follows the vultures.

Cheetahs 101
You may already know that cheetahs are the world's fastest land animal. But did you know their tails play a crucial role in hunting? Check out this and other fun facts about cheetahs.

A world without vultures is not a pleasant one—in India vulture populations plummeted after they were accidentally poisoned by feeding on livestock carcasses treated with a specific drug that is toxic to them. Without vultures to clean up carcasses, the population of wild dogs exploded and so did cases of rabies across the country, leading to many human deaths.